Paul Bunyan

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His Playground, The North Woods Paul Bunyan is the patron saint of all woodsman and lovers of outdoors; America's legendary hero. Several select ""call stories"" follow about him. Paul's parents used an old lumber wagon for a baby carriage. His feet dangled over the end of the wagon, tearing up the roads. In school paul used a slab of lime stone for a slate and a big white pine tree for a pencil. The teacher's inability to read Paul's huge script discouraged him and he decided to become a logger. The 10,000 lakes in this state are the footprints of Paul's Gigantic Blue Ox, Babe, who measured forty-two ax handles wide between the eyes. He hauled a whole section, 640 acres of timber at one time. Paul then would cut the timber and Babe would haul another section. Everytime Babe was to be shod, Paul opened a new iron mine. Babe ate in one day as much food as one crew could tote to camp in six months. One extremely cold winter, blue snowflakes as bif as a baseball submerged even the tallest trees. Paul had to tie a red stag jacket on Babe, his color being exactly like the snow. So cold it was that Paul's coffee pot froze solid to the back of the stove. When the blue snow melted, Babe's footprints were filled with blue water. Then Paul called his playground. ""The land of Sky Blue Water"". Johnny Inkslinger, Paul's bookkeeper, was about his size. He was a whiz at figures and efficiency. His fountain pen was connected by a hose to a barrel of ink. By not dotting ""I's"" and crossing ""t's"", he saved nine barrels of ink on the payroll alone in one winter. Paul's cook, Sourdough Sam, had only one leg and one arm but he and 267 flunk'es fed Puul's lumbering crew. Pancakes were made on a griddle so large that you couldn't see across it. Sixteen lored boys with bacon tied to their shoes greased the griddle. The enormous pancakes were carried to tables on conveyor belts. Big Joe, the master cook, made sausages as large as logs to go with the paucakes-fifty-fifty rabbit and horse meat. Huge doughnets were carried on long poles by two men. Big Joe called Paul's lumberjacks to meals by blowing Paul's dinnerhorn. The first time he below so hard that he knocked down several sections of timber and blew some of the luraber jacks so far away that it took then a day to get back to camp. In the early days, Paul had his triubles. Mosquitoes weighing a pound, wingspread 12 or 14 inches, mated with giant bees, produced offspring having stingers fore and aft